it's friday are you already are all joining me for tonight's big picture armoire laughlin mark a investigative reporter with the heritage foundation center for media and public policy nicole williams democratic strategist and brian darling senior fellow for government studies at the heritage foundation and columnist for the daily caller and townhall dot com thank you all for joining me thank you great to have you all with us earlier today in his first speech since being reelected president obama outlined his plans to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff take a look. we can't just cut our way to prosperity if we're serious about reducing the deficit we have to combine spending cuts with revenue and that means asking the wealthiest americans to pay a little more in taxes i refuse to accept any approach that isn't balanced. i'm

not going to ask students and see yours and middle class families to pay down the entire deficit while people like me making over two hundred fifty thousand dollars aren't asked to pay a dime more in taxes obviously republicans are unhappy about obama still wanting to raise taxes on the wealthy just hours before the president's speech speaker boehner gave a press conference where he said he had a plan to increase revenue without raising taxes and in an interview with breitbart dot com senate minority leader mitch mcconnell said i know some people out there think tuesday's results mean republicans in washington are now going to roll over and agree to democrat demands that we hike tax rates before the end of the year that's all there is no truth to that notion whatsoever so are republicans willing to let america go off the fiscal cliff just to protect the wealthy from having to pay their fair share of taxes brian you have your hand up you are ready to go if

you look at what happened the president say that he did not he was not going to negotiate on tax cuts for those making over two hundred thousand dollars a year so you have a president who's not giving much ground while individuals making over two hundred thousand families making over two hundred fifty thousand year so it doesn't seem like there's much compromise in that in that stance that he took in republicans have said they will do comprehensive tax reform but it has it has to be something that doesn't raise taxes have been even for really intransigent and saying we're not going to raise taxes on rich people well john boehner did put an olive branch out there in his first statement after your action he did say that he rejected it with a tweet well he's got arab leaders standing behind him with a shiver you know you know just you know you know as you move back a half an inch an error scott and you know it nicole your thoughts on this my thoughts are i think the president is open and willing to listen i think he has always from the very beginning has been willing to you know work with those across

the aisle and you know wanted things he had talked. it has been comprehensive tax reform and so that is something where i think there could be room for compromise i think that is something where both parties are able and willing to work together so you know he did extend all of the bush tax cuts in two thousand and ten so maybe hold do so again this time around i don't think so i think if you look at previous negotiations between the president and congressional republicans you know you had during during the debt talks speaker boehner offering eight hundred billion dollars worth of revenue increases and the president wouldn't compromise on that he insisted on another four hundred it's because he wasn't raising taxes on the rich you have been or wanted to raise taxes on everybody but his rich done by eliminating deductions in the tax code. and senator tax reform that we're talking no longer to doubt your mortgage interest you can no longer get a child you didn't just proved what brian was saying which is that republicans offered something and the president didn't like it so he rejected you know i wasn't willing to compound ational philosophical difference between arguing for the middle

class or a you for the top and the president refused to give any ground while speaker boehner was giving ground so i think that's a very good indicator of you know what i mean that this election on tuesday clearly shows that the american public agrees with the president stands with regards to this issue the american public that yes there should be taxes on those who do make that c. one hundred fifty thousand a year those people should be taxed in the election clearly showed that that's what the american public the american public also said they really wanted republicans to control the house and they really wanted john boehner you know this is a democrats in the house of representatives got a half million more votes than republicans in the house reaction to people that had had one day had had the election been held with the same congressional district drawing as in the last before two thousand and ten democrats were to go to clear the table but you know you get your email and it brought all this in mandarin in the you have an image that almost fifty percent of the american people voted for somebody other than barack obama for president the popular vote he barely got out

it's the same is true of george w. bush the same is true. of ronald reagan the same is true of every wasn't true a president you know president obama in two thousand and eight you know had and certainly you know arguably had a mandate that he does not. want to so i think what's getting lost in the whole discussion of political advantage and ideology is the actual effect that these taxes will have and you just a very quick question i want to wrap this topic up and move along in fact we've already gone over but my gas on this and i'm just like a reality check with this is not confrontational just my guess is that what's going to happen is because all the republicans have sworn failed to to grover norquist is that they will allow the bush tax cuts to expire which raises the tax rates by three percent or doesn't raise that it just stops the depression of them and then the first week of january the republicans can say ok we'll give tax cuts to middle income people which is what the president's asking for will leave the top rates where they are we're not increasing taxes grover norquist is happy republicans are

happy the president gets what he wants well i think i mean i was i was just saying you know i think the he what you need to pay attention to is not the ideology it's actually i think that that might work and you think that that's how it's going to be tremendously destructive economically and therefore republicans won't in should consent to it. i think it's possible i do think it's possible that agreement doesn't happen because i didn't hear from the president nor have i heard from republicans any real given take in the issues i think both sides are going to do much of what they've done in the past few years dig in go in and negotiate and i think they should drive over the cliff and i think it's going to be the best thing frankly for both parties because there's a survey that allows the republicans to say to grover we didn't raise taxes grover believe it or not and you know grover i mean you know he's a multimillionaire and a k. street lobbyists and kick some serious but anyhow believe it out republicans are learning lessons from the resound defeat tuesday speaker john boehner knowledge that the fight about obamacare is over corn a.b.c.

news when asked about future prospects of trying to repeal obamacare in the house. speaker boehner accepted that the fight was over saying this. you had said next year that you would repeal health care of that still your mission will either do much and it's pretty clear the president was related to obamacare is the law of the law. though he did later backtrack from those comments on twitter so does this mean that the republicans are going to give up on trying to repeal obamacare law well i think there's you know it's certainly a political advantage to be gained for republicans in the fact that you know as the regulations the the law sort of spelled out come into play they go into effect more people get access to inexpensive health as health care becomes more expensive and so on you know i think it's going to be a good opportunity for republicans to point out you know even even if they decide that they're not going to make a concerted effort anymore to essentially have

a we told you so moments and you know it might prevent future intrusions into the health care it is a whole one when obamacare kicks in and the sky doesn't fall are a lot of republicans going to a lot of egg on their face and might that not echo into the two thousand midterm i think they're already having egg on their face never public and governors who are now scrambling trying to get their states in order before the november sixteenth that line in order to with bad lists what they need to establish in order to implement the the health care act and so they already have egg on their face because they thought they wouldn't have to go through with these that with governor romney getting elected and now they do and they're like oh my god november sixth a no exit polls indicated that obamacare still is unpopular you're going to have middle class as a brand but exit poll also indicated when you ask questions about the details of obamacare people are wildly enthusiastic about it well obamacare as a whole is still unpopular people are going to be very upset when they get hammered with middle class tax hikes as

a result of obamacare on january first of next year when people get ahead. if their health care plan people are going to be a fat because they want to have lower prescription bills people are going to be a static because they're going to have lower code if they can't afford insurance and they're going to get hammered with the tax they're going to get be forced to pay a penalty the federal government just because you're talking about you know the people who are there or not because we're you know i'm sure you know not if you're if you make just enough not to get in a bad way and yet you deny health and initiatives that are there and you choose not to pay the ten thousand dollars a year or five thousand dollars of the cost right now you get health insurance then you get hit with a seven hundred fifty dollars if you can't afford health insurance and because you're not in any pain and what have you since gone away you're going to get hammered with the federal tax because you're so fresh a lot of the cost and you still have access to all of health care i mean i look i reserve going to washington i couldn't afford health care i had i had low jobs it just got me by i just barely could fill my tank there's no way to get health care

in the greatest nation on earth and brian darling doesn't have health insurance status here i'm sorry. but i the worst thing in the world would have been forcing me to buy health care that i could afford some gold plated health care plan that's approved by the federal government discovered so you know what's going on so it's health care plans that are literally so expensive that you have to be forced to buy them i think that's really the god who are against romney care but anyway ok yeah there you go yeah we should be calling it obamacare let's move on to the issue of immigration republicans are drastically changing their position now the president obama won seventy five percent of the latino vote all of a sudden probably republicans like john boehner former governor haley haley barbour who's still a kingmaker in the party senator jerry moran even sean hannity a major kingmaker in the party and called for a more moderate immigration stance within the republican party post-election including a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants currently living in the united states so you know bottom line is the republican party recognizing that ronald

reagan was right well i think the are right. seeing that in american hispanic community there's a tremendous potential for a surge in popularity there for conservative policies popular i mean ronald reagan did an amnesty for five or six million people plus reformed our immigration laws i would say the one big failure is that basically he he ordered the justice department stop enforcing employer sanctions and others don't get go after the fact cats anymore which created the magnet that brought us to where we are now you know i think that you know considering among the american hispanic community you know they start businesses at a far higher rate than than the general population there overwhelmingly socially conservative terms of views on marriage and abortion and so on so i definitely think voters are democrats as well as the you know i think now the republicans are having a come to jesus moment. and they are understanding that their principles their strict principles that again immigration with regards to you know their no amnesty

policies are really kicking them in the butt in terms that i think i'm going to cry in the last thirty seconds or see what happens obviously president bush had his own program his comprehensive immigration reform package that didn't pass president obama promised to do in his first year he didn't now he's got a second chance and it matters what's in that package if it's a do you think that is bush's package actually wasn't all that bad if obama were to adopt bush's package would republicans vote for it if i had to predict would it pass i think it would have a very good chance of passing i do but i don't know i mean if you look at that package it was a massive package it imploded on its own weight labor unions weren't all that excited about the track of jimmy and sure well we'll see how it all shakes out laughlin the coal brian thank you all thank you so much appreciate. america could get turned into a suffering third world country in just four easy steps. you

know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harkin welcome to the big picture.

here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that many americans call a donor. i'm sorry i'm just a guy who cares an awful lot about my country you sir are a fool you know what kind of my terrorist cells in your neighborhood all want the usa to defeat terrorism they are liberal and the christian point kills i can see your beliefs about it because it's going to support you to distract us from what you and i should care about because there are profit driven industry that sell the sensationalistic garbage because of breaking news i'm having martin and we're going to break that.

europe or it's the taiwanese transnational manufacturing corporation foxconn maybe opening up some plants here in the united states indicate that our nation has now entered the terminal fourth stage of third world as asian or what may be better referred to as simply colonization casey didn't know foxconn is china's largest private employer and is responsible for making many of those parts that go into your apple i phones i pads and i pods among other well steve jobs may have been a visionary when it came to technological design he was not a fan of labor unions or american workers in general so we outsourced most of his corporation's manufacturing to foxconn which was notorious for its low wage labor. workers live in overcrowded dorms that are located on the factory grounds they work

twelve hour shifts in a routinely exposed to dangerous working conditions recently one hundred thirty seven foxconn workers fell ill after they were forced to use toxic chemicals to clean i pads and in the last five years seventeen foxconn workers have committed suicide on the job nets have since been installed around the factory to catch workers jumping out of the windows so why the heck would foxconn look beyond their libertarian paradise of no labor laws to come to the united states employ a bunch of americans to know the answer to that question we have to understand the four stages the united states is currently racing through on the path to becoming a third world nation stage one the death of manufacturing from seven hundred ninety one when our nation's first treasury secretary alexander hamilton created an eleven point plan for american man. all the way up until the last few decades the united

states through those hundreds of years protected its manufacturing base with high tariffs on imports and government support for domestic industries this protectionist approach to trade transformed the united states into the world's largest export of manufactured goods which built and sustained an enormous middle class of americans working in factories collecting high wages then the forces of globalization crept to extol the virtues of a world economy frame from national boundaries and and free from protections for domestic manufacturing. with reagan's revolution in the one nine hundred eighty s. alexander hamilton's eleven point plan was not totally scrapped at least dented badly terrorists were ditched and then bill clinton moved into the white house in the one nine hundred ninety s. continued reagan's trade policies and then even went even further committed the united states to so-called free trade agreements like gatt nafta and joining the

deputy o. removing virtually all the protections that had kept our domestic manufacturing industries safe from foreign corporate predators for two hundred years in the one nine hundred ninety two presidential debate third party candidate ross perot famously warned about a jar and sucking sound of american jobs going south of the border to low wage nations. first i have to do is get all these folks we've got these want to trade agreements and we've negotiated over the years so fellows will fight the same deal we gave you. and they are good rock right at that point we have got to stop sending jobs overseas there will be a job sucking sound going south perot was right but no one in our government listened to it in the one nine hundred sixty s. one in three americans one hundred three worked in manufacturing producing things of lasting wealth today after jumping headfirst into one free trade agreement after another only one in ten americans one out of works in manufacturing over the last

decade fifty thousand factories in the united states have closed down five million manufacturing jobs have been lost they didn't disappear they just moved away to low wage factories like foxconn and foreign nations before regular on their won the right white house the united states was the world's largest importer of raw materials and the largest exporter of finished goods as well as the world's largest creditor the richest nation but today we're the world's largest exporter of raw materials and importer of manufactured goods no surprise that we're also the world's largest debtor when manufacturing dies the economy goes with it which brings us to stage two the harvesting of the middle class america's working class no longer builds t.v.'s or computers or furniture on assembly lines and i'll flip burgers at mcdonald's and turn down the sheets of holiday ends and those high skilled workers who used to design the marvels of manufacturing now manufacture

credit default swaps and mortgage backed securities on wall street in the one nine hundred fifty s. when our economy still embraced hamilton's eleven point plan manufacturing used to account for a quarter of our g.d.p. today it accounts for around a tenth. replaced by the low wage service sector and wall street and this new economy cannot support a middle class the service sector cannot create lasting wealth and neither can wall street before now after the average american taxpayer earned an inflation adjusted income of around thirty three thousand four hundred dollars a year in today's dollars by two thousand and eight that number dropped to just thirty three thousand dollars working americans maxed out their credit cards took out second mortgages on their homes just to make ends meet eventually even that wasn't enough to make ends meet today upwards of fifty million americans are living

in poverty and depend on food stamps the middle class devolved into the working class which further devolved into the working poor class local economies are collapsing states are going bankrupt and workers are being tenderized for colonization in the near future during stage three we see the export of massive amounts of american wealth that's because there's a hefty price tag associated with transitioning from being the world's largest exporter of manufactured goods to being the world's largest importer of manufactured goods we're now buying stuff we used to make that price comes in the form of trade deficits in two thousand and eleven the united states had a trade deficit of over a half trillion dollars with the rest of the world just one year essentially five hundred fifty eight billion u.s. dollars is being pocketed every single year by developing nations that are now manufacturing the goods that used to be made right here in the united states with

the pockets overflowing with u.s. dollars foreign investors begin buying up american industries every single second. more than four thousand dollars of american industry is sold off to foreign investors there is another four thousand there is another four thousand as another for those which brings us to the final stage stage for colonization with american workers desperate for any kind of an opportunity to work foxconn and other foreign corporations now have access to a brand new pool of cheap labor we've seen other companies like foxconn take advantage of these new low wage american workers ikea recently opened up a factory in virginia which just so happens to be a right to work for less state and it's not all that hospitable to labor unions now in sweden where ikea was founded and is based workers earn at least nineteen dollars an hour and enjoy a minimum of five weeks it's twenty five days paid vacation every year plus

weekends those are fairly high labor costs so executives at ikea they would have united states they go away you could pay workers just eight bucks an hour and given no vacation time at all or well be generous and give twelve days german auto manufacturer a volkswagen also found an advantage in moving manufacturing back to the united states they recently opened up a plant in chattanooga tennessee another by coincidence you know that really another right to work for less state unlike in germany where all the workers at major manufacturing firms are unionized collect high wages have good benefits could go on strike and sit on the company boards half of all the board seats in a company in germany with more than a thousand employees after the from the labor unions and have a say there for the decisions about the company's future none of that exists in chattanooga. in chattanooga workers are not unionized and they make just fourteen

dollars and fifty cents an hour compared to germans making forty five to fifty dollars. it's pretty clear what's happening we're becoming the world's latest cheap labor source not only that it's so much cheaper to send goods to american consumers when you don't have to ship those goods from halfway around the world as the price of oil goes up the price of shipping is going up and so you can get around that by moving your factory here where the consumers are plus with growing attention paid to the fact that nothing is made in america much anymore pretty much besides bombs and more planes foreign corporations would be delighted to be able to stamp made in the usa on the bottom of their products even if they're made by low wage americans which is why foxconn might be considering coming over here to you know it's hard to imagine american workers having to endure the same working conditions that chinese workers endure foxconn where nets outside the building prevent workers from committing suicide. but given the agenda of the republicans in the house of

representatives that tragic reality may not be so farfetched generations of labor law that produced a minimum wage a forty hour work week workplace safety laws child labor laws and most importantly decent wages and benefits are all under attack by republicans in congress and if they succeed then there's absolutely nothing protecting american workers from suffering the same fate as sweatshop workers overseas. the reason why this fourth stage can be terminal is because there are few treatment options available anymore . at the united states were to suddenly rethink its trade policies and put tariffs back into place it would have little impact since these foreign corporations there are already manufacturing right here in the united states you know our average terrace for two hundred years were around thirty percent they're around two percent

now if we took a back up to thirty percent they just say hey you know we've got a factory in your country we're making stuff here we don't need to pay any tariffs profits continue to go overseas rather than being circulated in the local economy. yet in the end we might get a lot of jobs that were lost in stage one but they wouldn't be good pay eighteen stage one jobs that american owned companies will be low wage jobs here in the united states but at foreign owned companies and all the profit created from that business activity goes outside the united states. at its core this is a form of colonization look up king leopold's congo for reference the united states is rapidly developing in a way never before witnessed in the history of the world and it would be a remarkable spectacle to behold if it weren't so damn tragic to our fellow citizens. let your elected representatives know that ross perot was right and it's

time to end this so-called free trade insanity. and that's the way it is tonight friday nov ninth two thousand and twelve. for more information on the stories we covered visit our website. or if. you missed any of the night's show you can now watch it in h.d. on hulu at hulu dot com slash pictures also check out our two youtube. links of. this entire show is also available as a free video podcast on i tunes and you can visit our dot com to download the audio podcast of our daily three to six radio show and we have a free i phone and i pad app at the app store and the app was made here in the united states. you can. feedback at twitter at. facebook. on our blogs message boards and telephone. and don't forget democracy begins when

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